>There seems to be a widespread misconception that "peer review" refers
>to a process in which the material to be reviewed is thrown open to
>the public. In fact the term is more restrictive and means a review by
>a small number of selected experts in the field. Here is a description
>from http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/articles/literati/peer/peerrev.htm:
The missing part of this process that helps ensure the reliability of
scientific results is that, after the peer review, the results are published
in a publicly-accessible journal from which anyone can try to reproduce
those results. A closed-source peer review leaves out this last step -- we
have to assume that the selected experts thought of every problem that could
have happened with the experimental process (or software development process
in this case).
Although personally I would get a great deal of comfort from knowing that
say, Ron Rivest, had reviewed a particular piece of cryptographic software,
I would be even more comfortable if that software was also Open Source.
Depending on what I was going to use the software for, I might be willing to
only use Open Source cryptographic software.
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Mark Leighton Fisher [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Thomson Consumer Electronics Indianapolis IN
"Their walls are built of cannon balls,
Their motto is 'don't tread on me'"
